Dumped, Actually(76)

What must it be like to be that in love? To be that perfect for one other? To have found the right person to share your entire life with?

It’s something I want so, so much for myself . . . but the harder I try to find it, the more elusive it becomes.


Through tears that are just as much about my own misery as they are about my parents’ happiness, I glance over at the geranium I bought that day in the garden centre, after my confrontation with Sam. It really is very bushy.

And while I’m staring at it, something clicks in my head.

Something fundamental.

Something unbearably true.

This is what I want. This is what I’m chasing. This is what I’ve been desperate for all of my life. The kind of effortless and towering love that my parents have for each other.

I pushed so hard at my relationship with Sam because I was trying to recreate what I see in front of me right now. The perfect romance.

My parents have given me nothing but love, care and affection my entire life – but they’ve also provided me with an example of what love can be, that I can never hope to match. No matter how hard I try.

I am pathologically addicted to finding the love of my life, because that’s what my mother and father did all those years ago.

And it’s ruining me.

My hands start to shake, and I can feel my breath coming in short, sharp gasps. The rest of the ceremony is blocked out as I sit there, looking at my parents, but seeing absolutely nothing.

This is the revelation that Troy the imaginary elephant was trying to force upon me. This is what the bloody geraniums were all about.

And I didn’t need to even speak to my mother and father to realise it. I just had to hear them speak to each other – in words of love that were as wonderful as they were awful. Wonderful because that’s the way they feel about each other, and awful because they are words I may never get to say or hear.


I just about manage to compose myself through the rest of proceedings. It’s not like I’m the only one blubbing, anyway. Just about everyone has been reduced to tears by the vows my parents have just exchanged. I’m probably the only one whose tears are as much about their own pain as they are about happiness for Mum and Dad’s love for one another, though.

I give Mum and Dad the biggest hug imaginable when the ceremony is over, and the vicar has gratefully gone to sit down in the shade. Of course, I don’t tell them about the disturbing revelation I’ve just had about myself, and them. That’d just ruin their special day completely.

I don’t need to force them into a potentially uncomfortable conversation any more. It appears the conversation I had with myself in that bloody tank was all I really needed. Sitting next to the geraniums, watching my parents, was the final extra push required to get me to face up to the truth.

When they suggest I spend the night in my old room, I immediately agree.

I feel comprehensively drained of all energy by the time Mum and Dad are saying goodbye to the rest of the guests, and can think of nothing more pleasant than spending the night in the room I spent my childhood in. It was always a comfy bed back then, and I’m sure it’s just as comfy now.

‘Are you okay, sweetheart?’ Mum says to me as the three of us sit in front of the TV later that evening. I’m supposed to be watching Escape to the Country with them both, but am in fact just staring ahead into space, still mulling over the epiphany I had earlier.

‘What?’ I reply, startled out of my reverie. ‘Oh. Yes. I’m fine, Mum. Just a little tired.’

‘Are you sure? You look like you have something on your mind.’

I open my mouth. Then close it again.

For the briefest of moments, I feel like telling them both everything. But I stop myself, because I don’t want to ruin what has been a very pleasant day for them.

Besides what exactly would I say?

I feel miserable as sin, because you have the perfect marriage, and I’ve ruined my own relationships trying to emulate it?

I think that there must be something wrong with me, because I can’t achieve what you two have had all of your lives, with no effort?

Oh yes. That’d go down really well, wouldn’t it?

‘I’m just tired, Mum,’ I eventually say. ‘I think I might go up to bed.’

‘Okay, sweetheart,’ she replies, her brow creased with concern.

I stand up and walk over to the door. ‘It really was a wonderful ceremony,’ I tell them.

‘And the vicar didn’t die even once!’ Dad says with a snort.

‘Leonard!’ Mum exclaims in mild shock.

I smile at them both and take my leave, trudging up the stairs with a heavy heart.

Lying in my childhood bed (which is indeed still comfortable, if a little small for me, now I’m in my thirties), I stare up at the ceiling for what feels like hours, turning everything over in my head.

And the central questions I keep coming back to are . . . Why can’t I have what my parents have? Why do I keep getting dumped? What’s wrong with me?

Eventually, I fall into a fitful sleep. In it, I dream of golf balls and geraniums. Of Wendy houses and baby deer. Of rollercoasters and car parks.

But most of all, I dream of Sam, riding an elephant off into the distance . . . without me.


I am woken the next morning by the sounds of banging.

And raised voices.